vegetables in short Arctic summers. Yakuts of father Mikhail's parish were segregated into the richer nomads who herded horses and cattle, and poorer settlers, the "River Yakuts". The latter settled along the rivers, and survived by fishing alone, their only livestock being the sled dogs. Zashiversk then still retained some of its logistical functions: Wrangel's stay there coincided with the passage of a government caravan with salt and flour heading to Nizhnekolymsk; horses for the caravan were provided by the Yakuts. John Dundas Cochrane visited Zashiversk in December 1822 on foot and lamented that "Of all the places I have ever seen, bearing the name of city or town, this is the most dreary and desolate: my blood froze within me as I beheld and approached the place." He recorded seven single-person households: two clergymen, a widow, two non-commissioned officers, a postmaster and a trader: "I have seen a merchant ship with sixteen guns and only fifteen men, but I never before saw a town with only seven inhabitants". Cochrane praised the hospitality of these people who provided him with "living in a state of luxury" and "plenty of fish ... the greatest delicacy I have ever tasted." Ghost town Wrangel and Cochrane visited Zashiversk after the population was hit by the first outbreak of smallpox in 1816. The second outbreak, in 1840, killed all the remaining settlers (or, according to different accounts, spared just one girl). Depopulation of Zashiversk spawned a Siberian legend: when local traders found a chest abandoned at the fairground, a shaman prohibited opening the chest while an Orthodox priest agreed to open it. Traders opened the chest ... and released the grim reaper. According to George Kennan, in 1879 the bureaucracy believed that the deserted town still existed, and dispatched Hermann Schiller, a political exile from Poltava, on a 3,700 mile march on foot to Zashiversk. Only then did the news of the town's demise reach the government, and Schiller was taken on another year's journey to Srednekolymsk. A similar fictional story was retold by Adam Szymansky in A Pinch of Salt. Officially, Zashiversk ceased to exist only in 1890. Harry de Windt, who travelled through the region in 1902, witnessed Zashiversk abandoned, its ruins still standing. He noted that the town was still marked on contemporary British maps and the 1883 map of Russian General Staff. Modern studies In 1969 achaelologists led by Alexey